The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Health system needs improvement, says NRHM review report

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Wednesday, Dec 03, 2008
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Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Health system needs improvement, says NRHM review report

Staff Reporter

First Central Review Mission to
evaluate Kerala
State appreciated for sprucing up health system

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Common Review Mission (CRM), in its first appraisal report of the State’s implementation of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), has suggested that a stronger monitoring and evaluation mechanism be set up to ensure that the mission achieved its goals in Kerala.

The State needs to assess and understand better the unmet needs of its target population before planning and implementing health initiatives under the NRHM, the CRM team is said to have suggested.

This is the mission’s second CRM, but the first one to evaluate Kerala. The five-member CRM team had chosen Thiruvananthapuram and Wayanad as the districts for evaluation. The team had split up and visited several healthcare institutions in both districts in the past five days.

Their preliminary assessment of the State’s health system and evaluation of the impact of NRHM initiatives were presented before the officials of the Health Department and the State NRHM unit on Monday.

The State came in for general appreciation for the manner in which it was sprucing up its health system under the NRHM.

The CRM also identified the areas where the performance has not been up to the mark.

They were very appreciative about the utilisation of its Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs).

This was a component that Kerala had fought to be introduced in the State as it needed more field workers to cover its coastal, tribal and urban slum population.

Kerala was appreciated for its palliative care programmes, e-banking initiative, coordination between the district medical officers and the NRHM district officials, drug procurement and distribution system.

One crucial observation by the CRM team was that the State did not seem to have a sustainable mechanism to ensure that its healthcare institutions were managed well.

It noted that only those institutions headed by committed and enterprising doctors were functioning well.

The State needed to ensure that the doctors were motivated enough and given sufficient training.

The CRM pointed out that the Health Management Information System, being piloted in Thiruvananthapuram, was not very effective right now. Field workers needed to be trained better and some changes needed in the software.

Much of the issues in monitoring and review could be set right if the data flow mechanism was functioning properly, it was noted.

It was noted that while most of the local bodies had utilised the untied funds for public health centres/community health centres properly, the utilisation of the annual maintenance grant was not at all satisfactory.

Health Secretary Vishwas Mehta pointed out that the State needed more funds to invest in mental health programmes for all districts.

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